all i want for christmas
by Ash Light
Summary: "All my life, and I've finally done something worthwhile." The gifts Jim Gordon gets at Christmas vary from year to year. With appearances from the Gordon family, Batman and John Blake; spoilers up to DKR.


**Title: **all i want for christmas

**Disclaimer: **All the characters therein belong to the immensely talented Chris Nolan, and the various people who write the Batman comics.

**Notes:** Came to mind after watching DKR and going through several days of withdrawal symptoms after leaving the cinema. The aging of Jim Gordon's kids might be a little off, so be warned...

-o-

_when a child is born_

-o-

The snow whirling outside the hospital windows is tinged with smoke and grime. They passed a five car pile-up on the way to Gotham General, and the howls of his wife are drowned out by the screams of a man who got on the wrong side of Carmine Falcone and had a digger run over his fingers for the trouble. The resident attending to her – a _kid_, a pimply-faced boy that in another world he might have busted for driving his first car too fast – apologises, sweating through his scrubs, but there's going to be no-one more senior attending his wife because of a mass shooting. In the corridor outside, the broken fluorescent lights cast everything around in a pale, miserable light.

And this is the world they're bringing a child into.

Jim Gordon's always accepted that he's not what you would call brave. Brave cops in this town equate to stupid cops, and stupid cops end up dead. He's no hero, he knows he doesn't make a difference. He just…well, he just thought he'd be a bit more ready for this. But now, Christ – he can barely breathe.

Gotham General's never exactly been a shining light on the skyline – he's visited enough injured colleagues here to know – but in the grim light of winter, everything is shadowed. The Christmas tree in the corner droops miserably in its pot, the browning pine needles scattered on the floor. Faded tinsel hanging from its branches is limp and tired and old. He can sympathise. They had planned to have kids almost as soon as they were married – two stupid high-school sweethearts, fresh-eyed, heads buzzing with dreams; they'd picked out names and he was already planning how to decorate a nursery – but time passed and work built up and they were scared, always scared. Just switching on the news made them cling to each other's hands just that little bit tighter. _Can we really bring a baby into the world? _Our_ world?_ And now it's time and he's still not ready, and there are too grey hairs when he looks in the mirror and glasses almost permanently on the bridge of his nose, and he can't do this, he just _can't._

A nurse comes hastening out the door, clutching some kind of bloodstained apparatus in her hand. He nearly wretches just looking at it. "Excuse me, miss – "

"Sorry sir." She pulls away, already hurrying down the corridor. He's left there, powerless.

His partner, a big guy the size of a truck with the world's worst combover, patted him on the back as when he got the call. "Go on Jimmy. Good luck. Give her a kiss from me, you hear?" He'd have taken the encouragement slightly better if he didn't know the guy would take advantage of his absence to patrol the Narrows with his eyes fully closed to everything that moves, his pocket bulging from the backhanders he takes. He's told him to stop enough, but his partner just laughs.

_I can't protect the guy from himself; what the hell makes me think I can protect a kid?_

The pale, watery sound of carol singers' voices float through the window. The past couple of days he's lost complete track of the date – is it possible it's Christmas Eve?

_O holy night_, he thinks wryly to himself. _Unto us a child is born_.

This city has a way of getting to you. Once he thought he could do anything – he was going to change the world, save Gotham, clear up the streets and make this a place where a man could be proud to raise a family. And now? Well, now he knows he's just some ordinary guy. He's just one man. He doesn't run with the rest of the pack, that's true, he doesn't take backhanders and play along with the mob; but on the other hand he doesn't _do_ anything about it. He doesn't stop anything. This city takes off the rose-coloured spectacles and forces you to see the world as it is. He's just one man, and one man can't do anything.

He keeps telling himself that at least he can be a good dad. But really? He's not so sure of that either.

"Mister Gordon!" The boy's tugging on his coat sleeve, as insistent as a rat. "Mister Gordon – "

"Sergeant Gordon," he corrects gently.

"Sergeant Gordon, your wife's asking for you!"

Barbara's lying back on a mountain of worn, stained pillows, her hair sticking to her face and her eyes ringed with shadows. A thin sheen of sweat covers her skin like film. She looks like hell, like she's climbed to the moon and back – and she's smiling. And he steps forward, and sees the bundle lying in her arms, and the bottom of his world just drops from under his feet.

"That's – um – that's – " He gropes for words, mouth opening like some kind of goldfish. "That's a baby, Barbara."

"The doctor told me it might be." His wife beckons him over, and over he comes, like some greedy child being offered a sweet. "Come say hello."

It's tiny. He can't believe how tiny this little creature is, wrinkled up face and miniscule, slender limbs still streaked with blood and fluid. Soft wisps of hair brushes against its head; the child's eyelids are as delicate as butterfly wings. When he lifts the small, vulnerable, pink scrap of flesh, all mewling and gurgling, the weight is lighter than air. Dazed eyes slowly open and meet his. _All my life, and I've finally done something worthwhile._ The sound of the carol singers is distant, even in here.

"Oh Barbara," he whispers, "it's just what I always wanted."

-o-

_it's beginning to look a lot like christmas_

_-_o-

Christ, sometimes he just doesn't know why he bothers. What the hell is the point of being a cop if _someone_ – alright, not someone, it's not just _one_ lousy stinking colleague, it's nearly _every_ lousy stinking colleague, but Flass is definitely the worst – treats the law as if it's all some elaborate game of pin in the tail on the donkey, close your eyes and make a random stab at the target and if you miss, well, who the hell's going to care? What does it matter, anyway? It's only the law. It's only the world we live in. He passes the night security guard, Christmas party hat slumping dangerously atop his big bald head, with little more than a grunt and a nod.

So many of them aren't corrupt, he _knows _this. They aren't corrupt, they aren't even in the mob's pocket, hell, they aren't even bad people. They're just scared, and there's the problem. They're so terrified that one wrong move might hurt the people in charge, and so they make no moves at all. None. They stand back and wash their hands of the whole damn mess, and good, innocent people suffer for it. All it takes on top of this hell is some real weasel like Flass, who takes protection money from scared civilians for _fun_, and that's just enough to turn his day real peachy, thank-you so goddamn much.

He jams the key into his front door and steps in. After a day like today, he's ready just to sink under the covers and wait for the whole rotten world to just disappear.

"_Daddy_!"

Of course, in this household, that's just not going to happen.

It's Christmas Eve in the Gordon household, and that means that chaos is rampant. Already far past their bedtime, the kids are nonetheless making a real honest effort to turn the place into a tip before Santa even gets here. Broken toys are strewn menacingly across the floor, creating a minefield of jagged edges and treacherous wheels to the uninitiated. Half-made paper chains hang from every available surface, while the plastic Christmas tree nearly sags with the weight of decorations loaded from its branches. _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_ is blasting from the stereo at some incalculable volume. James is bouncing merrily on the armchair, both arms windmilling frantically, a toy aeroplane in each hand, while Babs has made a fort out of the couch cushions and is conducting what appears to be a full-on battle scene between the novelty Santas – there's four, of varying sizes – and the wooden nativity set. Already the third wise man's head has been torn off and placed on the fort as some sort of grisly war trophy. In the kitchen, Barbara – frantically preparing the turkey as if her life depends on it – shrugs helplessly.

He ducks under a low-hanging piece of tinsel, sidesteps the abandoned roller-skate with panache, and makes a heroic leap over the scattered lego pieces in order to sink with all the weariness of a war-veteran into the dilapidated couch.

"Daddy, Daddy, it's Christmas Eve!"

"I know, Jimmy," he replies gently, watching as his son's spiralling hands swing dangerously close to the ceiling light. He prays Barbara hasn't taken the last of the aspirin. "Be careful, ok?"

"Daddy, come play with us!"

"Jimmy, Dad's tired, leave him alone," lectures his older sister, brandishing a toy santa with far more menace than any eight year old really has the right to have. "You know he's always sad when he gets home from work."

And he _is_ tired. He is so, so tired of feeling like he can't do any good, like he's just some waste of space. He's tired of watching all this hell day after day and not being able to do a blind bit of difference. He's tired of coming home on days like today, the most magical time of the year, and poisoning his family's happiness. What right does he have to do that? An eight year old girl shouldn't be able to look at her father and see all of _this._

His back slump, his eyelids droop. _This is_ _the merriest time of year, and I don't even know it._

"Dad?"

When he looks up it's to see Jimmy solemnly holding out a plate of crumbling, home-decorated cookies - the icing looks suspiciously nibbled in some areas, but he'll let that go – and his favourite teddy bear for comfort. Babs climbs up on the couch next to him and hugs his arm. He takes a cookie, and the teddy bear. It feels more comforting in his arms than it should. "Will you have fun with us now?"

"Thanks, son," he replies softly. "I'm just not in a very fun mood right now."

"Daddy," Babs, who manages to do a startling impersonation of her mother when she wants to, says sternly, "you're being a Grinch."

He scrunches up his face comically. "Bahh. Humbug. Oh, how I hate Christmas."

Both his children giggle, and his son throws a cookie at him.

He crafts paper chains until his fingers are numb and then submits to having them hung around his neck in great big necklaces and garlands; he helps build the lego into a giant Santa's grotto and sings along to the tape of old Christmas carols. When the kids get sleepy, he lets them curl up within the cushion-fort and reads stories to them through the doorway. It's he who carries them both to bed, tucks them in tight and kisses them goodnight.

When he leaves Jimmy's room he pauses, then smiles, and dons a paper hat.

**-**o-

_do you hear what i hear?_

-o-

The thug is at least two feet taller than him, his bulging muscles covered in tattoos of flames and skulls, and swaying slightly in the breeze from being hung upside down from a streetlamp. And what's that binding his wrists together? A length of tinsel.

"Nice touch," he remarks to the empty air.

Nothing. For a moment he's certain, as he has been a dozen times, that he's going crazy, that anyone who came out here would see nothing but a mad old cop talking to thin air. And then:

"I thought you'd like the festive air."

It's like nothing he's ever heard on earth. Like someone speaking through thunder. At least he doesn't jump straight out of his skin like he used to though. He's gotten used to it. Him, and his presents.

"This is one of Sal Maroni's top enforcers. He's the guy Maroni sends to teach his enemies a lesson. He's ready to talk to you now."

He glances over his shoulder. Yes, there he is, all carved out of darkness, lurking in the shadows. "Maroni's men don't talk."

Is that a smile, hiding beneath his cowl. "This one will. If you promise him he'll never have to face me again."

There are bruises already blossoming over this guy's cheeks, arms, chest. He can't help but feel the first tug of a grin at his lips. So many years ago, a young, idealistic, rookie cop, he swore he'd never be one of those guys who used violence, who approved of it, that the high road was always better. But for men like this…

He allows the grin to bloom, and moves to grab his radio mike to call it in. "That's a very thoughtful Christmas present of you. Makes me feel bad I didn't get you something in return."

The figure gives another growl. "Just see he's locked up for a very long time."

There's no promise of that, not in this city, but still he nods automatically as he calls it in. One less thug off the street, that's got to be worth something. And then he can go home, he can go _home_, to Barbara and the kids, he can sink into the sofa and smile at the knowledge that something's changing, that something's getting _better._ He has that luxury.

But this guy, with his cap and his cowl and his hidden face, what does he have? A family, living in complete ignorance of his whole life, a family that knows everything there is to know? A wife, a father, a mother, children, anything? When he drives that insane _thing_ back to his house does he look up and check to see if the lights are lit and waiting for his return, or is there no-one to turn them on?

"Hey, do you need a - "

He's already gone. As he always is.

Gordon pauses and then sighs, whistling _Santa Baby_ under his breath as he waits for back-up to get here.

-o-

_if we make it through december_

-o-

It's been months, and yet the search continues. What started off under his control has taken on a life of its own, spurred on by ambitious junior colleagues and the press and the roaring, unforgiveable tide of public opinion. The onslaught is like a wave. Their investigation is no longer a joke, an attempt to see who can pin the most ludicrous photograph on the _Who Is The Batman_ board, but an attack, a full-blown war on the man who did nothing save shoulder the blame. And it's all his fault.

His. He lied. When the first squad car screeched to a halt and his colleagues ran out, breathless, and saw the broken body on the ground, Barbara sobbing hysterically into her sleeve, his children standing like dazed bomb victims and he in the middle of it all, he lied. Yes, the Batman did this, yes the Batman did that. It's the truth that Gotham needs right now. It's the truth Gotham deserves. And it's the truth that blisters in his throat until he can't bear to speak it any longer, until his friends and work mates refrain from asking questions because they believe the Batman's attack on the police, on Harvey Dent, on his own family, has crippled him. That he can't live with the betrayal.

The Batman's betrayal. Not his own.

It's not just him. Each one of his family has lied fully and irrevocably, and he's the one that's made them do it. His wife lies to the press, his children lie to their school friends. When he flips through the police report he reads his wife's, his daughter's, his son's words, their _false_ words, printed on the paper in black and white. He tells them to, tells them why. And even though they pretend to understand, he can feel the weight of their gazes press into him.

Barbara is the worst, he knows. He's already given up, although it will be another two long, exhausting years before the final break. She looks at him and sees the man who failed to protect their family. He knows it. Their marriage is creaking under the weight of failed expectations and lies.

It's a cold night, in the bitter depths of winter, when he ducks out the back door and sees that shape. That familiar shape.

Even in the twinkling glow of the fairy lights – Babs put them up herself, pink tongue poking out in concentration, balancing on the handrail in scuffed sneakers – he can't fully make out his face. It's shadowed, as always, beneath that heavy cowl. He thinks he can make out new lines, new creases – of weariness, anger, despair, he doesn't know. Grief, or maybe even betrayal, haunts his face.

They watch each other for what seems like an eternity; finally he clears his throat. "I should call this in."

"You should," the figure agrees, darkly. His voice is as heavy as ever. "You haven't been leading the investigation personally."

No, that's quite true, he hasn't, he's taking a backseat; choosing instead to put a pair of ruthlessly ambitious detectives on the case and let them battle each other out for it. He tried for a whole damn two weeks, staring over case reports and snippets of evidence and photographs and supposed sightings, and it's just _too damn much._ This man was Gotham's _hero._ This man saved his son's life. He can't do this; the weight of these lies are beginning to cripple him.

"No," he admits. "I don't…I don't think I can manage – "

"_You have to!_"

That snarl, that ferocious growl, that must have sent so many criminals to their knees with fear.

He's so tired of this. At work people look at him like a hero, the man who oversaw bringing the Joker to his knees, the man who endured his own family being taken by a masked and caped thug, the man who even now wrestles with the scum of Gotham to bring this city back to a place of order and justice. On the street people call out to him with hope in their voices. They beg him to talk of Harvey Dent, of his final moments, of his heroics. They're children calling out for a fairy tale to soothe them, and try as he might, he cannot deprive them of the lie.

"What Harvey Dent did…"

"What Harvey Dent did that day," the figure stresses, "doesn't stop what he did ever day before he was broken. The good he did. The Joker only destroyed Dent because he knew doing so would tear this city apart. Don't let that psychopath win."

And he won't, he knows this. Even before the shadow swings itself up into the darkness, he knows he will. He owes the Batman this much as least. And if he cannot give Gotham the truth, at least he can give them a lie they can live with. At least he can use this lie, this thing of ugliness, as a staff with which they can pull themselves up.

They need this mercy, this undeniable gift, which the Batman has given them. He just doesn't particularly want it.

-o-

_silent night_

_-_o-

The apartment's never seemed so _empty_ before now. Oh, it's been six months since the divorce, he's gotten used to the fact of it, the hard cold reality of it – this is Gotham, after all, a place where cold hard reality rules, rules everywhere except in his own words – but this, this is different. He's never sat home on Christmas Eve without decorations, without carols blasting from the stereo, without chaos and noise and laughter. This place is devoid, it's torn open, its insides have been carved open until it's hollow.

It used to seem so small when it was the four of them, all cramped spaces and awkward corners and tight, annoying fits. Now, here, it's too big. It's yawning, a great big chasm of a place. But he'll never leave, though a Police Commissioner's salary could buy a place twice this size. He can't bring himself to.

There are a few Christmas cards on the windowsills. Not as many as before though.

Oh _God_, he misses them. He misses the mere _presence _of them inside the apartment, the faint sounds of someone arguing or laughing as he looks over his work, the softest smell of his wife's perfume lingering in a room she had occupied mere seconds ago, the abandoned books or clothes draped over a surface that remind him he's not alone. He misses Jimmy's laughter, his quick mind, his unquestioning faith in everything he believes in. He misses Babs' dogged tenacity, her courage. And he misses Barbara – hell, he just misses the way that, when he would come to bed after a long and miserable night shift, she would just reach over without saying anything and hold him. Now when he comes home only cold sheets and memories are left to greet him.

He could have dealt with anything, if only he'd got to keep them. It sounds terrible – more than terrible, because he still loves his ex-wife, can't imagine a world in which he doesn't – but if he'd even been able to keep the kids, he would be alright. Still, it's nice sometimes to imagine them all together in some sunlit, white-washed house, making a new life for themselves. Barbara's occasional phone calls paint something of a picture of this idyllic life – Jimmy's on the soccer team, Babs has taken up kickboxing, the kitchen needs repainting. It makes him smile.

Still. It's Christmas. He can't quite force himself to smile when he's here, alone, on Christmas.

He might call, but he knows what he'll get. Jimmy's voice will be soft and stilted, untrusting, unwilling to talk to the man who's formed his entire future into a lie, making him the boy who forever will be the Boy Who Saw The Batman Murder Harvey Dent. He resents him for it, Gordon knows this. Babs might be a little better – she's older, maybe she understands – but even as they speak he'll feel the weight of Barbara's gaze, her grief, pierce through the telephone wires and cutting their conversation to shreds.

So he doesn't bother. Instead he pours himself a glass of scotch, and sips carefully. _Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night._

-o-

_grown-up christmas list_

-o-

When he opens the door there's John Blake standing at his kitchen window and watching the street below with a look of concentration on his face, the phone cradled in his hand. "When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter," he quotes, "I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter."

"Ho ho ho," he replies wryly. "Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. Don't test me, detective, Jimmy had to memorise that entire poem for a school play ten years ago and I must have gone over it a hundred times."

The younger man grins. "I bow to the master."

Their clatters are caused not by reindeer or fat, jolly men dispensing hope and good cheer, but heavy armoured tanks rattling down the street and flanked by strange, fanatical men with wild eyes and loaded machine guns. He remembers when the sight of those Tumblers would have been enough to set any cop grinning, a huge mad involuntary grin, because that crazy excuse for a car was only driven by one man, and any cop chasing down some thug with faster engines and fiercer firepower would be damn glad to see the Batman on the road. But now those things mean fear, and pain, and death, a constant reminder that no matter what's told to them day in and day out by their new _leader_, they are not free men.

He lets John pour him a cup of coffee and sips slowly, still staring out the window, as tired as a tired old man can be. As mad as it is to accept anything about this hell they're forced to endure, he actually doesn't mind living with the young detective. Back in the first days, when chaos still ripped through the streets, he'd protested furiously, and Blake had just as furiously told him that he wasn't going anywhere. 'You saw that TV broadcast of Bane's,' he'd growled, in a way which made it perfectly clear that all was not yet forgiven, 'you think you'll get five steps beyond my door before someone cuts you down?' So, like it or not, they'd stuck together, two angry men under one roof. But now it's different; now he's used to hearing the kid whistle off-key in the morning, or remembering to collect food from the guards for two people instead of one. He's missed having someone to talk to. He's missed having another presence in the house.

It's not easy. John still hates the very fact of those lies, one piled up on another on another – hell, son, he'd muttered that first day, you hate them almost as much as I do. There are still days, when Bane's goons place his picture up on the local news on the _Enemies of Gotham_ section, when the young man's eyes darken and his fists clench. He approves of that. It would bother him all the more if he'd let it go straight away. _I picked the right one for detective there_, he thinks, and wonders how he could have lost out on this proud, almost fatherly emotion for so long since the kids left.

Now, however, he sits at the kitchen table flipping through newspapers – all the editors are scared stiff of Bane and his men, still, it makes for decent reading when there's nothing else around – and listening to old carols on the radio. Some of the younger boys from the orphanage have cut out stars and pictures of nativity scenes and given them to John; they decorate the apartment in a mass of squiggly, uneven lines and over-enthusiastic crayon. There'll be no festivities or joyous celebrations tonight. Still, those unskilled pictures represent hope to him, in a way he can never express.

John's still muttering on the phone, occasionally glancing over in his direction, putting it down and waiting for long periods of time. After about half an hour the young detective gets some answer that makes him whoop with triumph.

"Who were you phoning?" They have few friends in the city these days, at least few friends who will publically acknowledge their association with cops, and Bane's cut all communication with the outside world. Gotham is well and truly cut off.

He's grinning, like a child about to offer up his first hand-picked Christmas present. One hand extends the phone. "Go on. Take it and see."

Bemused, he takes it.

"Hello?"

There's a sharp intake of breath from the other end. "Dad? Holy shit, Babs, I really got through! Go on, go get Mom – Dad, I can't believe it's you! We didn't know what happened after that game, we saw it all on the news and – Oh my God, I can't believe you're alive; are you sure you're ok? Are you safe? Talk to me, Dad, tell me what's going on – "

His eyes are almost blind with tears as he looks back up, but he catches the smile John gives him before he walks away.

There's no way of knowing how the young detective managed to wrangle this – favours called in, technicians with the force who still know how to operate radio – and there's no way of asking. His throat is too tight for the words even to be spoken; his heart is buoyed with the energy of this gift beyond words. There is no way of repaying his host for this, and no way he'd even be able to try. So he takes a deep breath, all the more to reassure himself that this is reality, and listens to his son.

-o-

_i'll be home for christmas_

-o-

"You're wearing the hat," announces his daughter as soon as he sets foot inside the apartment.

"I am not," he replies, with all the dignity a police commissioner can muster, "wearing the hat."

She merely smiles at him, that little smile she'd already perfected at the age of three that told him _Now Dad, really, you know I've already won this argument._ Babs herself is resplendent in a red Santa Claus hat, with a bell on the end. "Actually, you are," she says cheerfully, and pops a paper hat over his grey hair. He can't help but chuckle. The truth is he adores having her back in this apartment, ever since she moved back to Gotham a mere two weeks after the city was set free, sitting on the steps outside his office with cops tripping over her left right and centre until he gave her the keys to the apartment. His daughter, he acknowledges with a smile, has turned into a tough young woman, with guts, grit, and – he glances around his apartment with a certain sense of foreboding – the delicate artistic touch which make his apartment the only man-made structure visible from the moon. There are neon lights and huge bushels of tinsel everywhere you look.

Thankfully, at least, control of the cooking has been manfully taken over by John. There's too many flammable items here to let his daughter loose in the kitchen.

A fire crackles in the background, the Christmas tree is once more groaning from the burden of baubles, lurid fairylights, tinsel and cheap toys. A dancing Santa takes pride of place on the mantelpiece. In the kitchen Babs dances around to an old CD of corny Christmas hits and hitting John with a tea towel when he refuses to join in. The smell of warm food and smoke and mulled wine is heavy in the air. Watching the spectacle, he feels his smile stretch until it almost hurts. He's indescribably happy. He's home.

"Will you stop grumbling? And it's your turn for a party hat, John, come on."

"No way – no, I'm not wearing it, I have a spatula here, I'm not afraid to use it – "

This is _normal._ This sharp, gentle, friendly teasing, this is _normal_. Coming home to a smiling face and the smell of food in the kitchen, that's normal, a day's work in which he can breathe easy, smile, because he can do the job without fearing for his life, that's normal. He drives to work each day without fear and trades jokes with his colleagues, he thumbs through reports of the Wayne Foundation orphanage in his free time. Sometimes he'll walk through the streets to get his lunch without seeing a single case of violence or of distress. This is _life._

Oh, it's taking time, there's no doubting that. Crime still runs through the streets, there's still murderers and thieves out there. There's no magic cure for human nature, and some hurts take a long time to heal. He knows that as well as anyone else; there's those who will still turn away and spit as soon as see him for the lies he's told. The wounds of Gotham go deep, but they're finally beginning to heal.

He sits himself down and glances over the paper. There's stories of renewal, rebuilding, healing; everywhere there are signs of restoration to this city. The front page bears a huge black and white snap of a city skyline, and moving over the rooftop of a particularly tall apartment block, a dark, cowled figure. And above, the headline: _BATMAN'S RETURN?_

Babs frowns gently, looking over his shoulder. "It can't be him, can it?"

"No." He doesn't know why he believes that Bruce Wayne is alive. A thousand people saw the blast, a looming mushroom cloud blossoming over the sea like a poison; a thousand people saw the Batman flying that bomb far, far away from them. He himself saw the man get into his contraption. He _saw_ it. And yet…Maybe he's just a stupid old man, trying to hold onto hope, but little things pieced together keep his mind wondering. Still, he's sure the man won't come back, not even if he survived. What's left for him here, after all this time? What would he come back for, an empty old house and two gravestones covered in moss? The boy's world in Gotham ended the day his parents were gunned down before his very eyes, everything else has been killing time. He gave all he could to Gotham, but it could give so little for him in return. "He's gone, Babs, we all saw it. This guy must be another copycat." Nonetheless, glancing over these newspaper cuttings, recalling the reports that are filed as a matter of course…A frown creases. "Still, it's a damn good one. Where in the hell did he get all the kit? We never found the Batman's headquarters, not in nine years."

Blake busies himself with basting the turkey and doesn't look up.

"The Batman inspired us to be heroes," he murmurs. _Some in different ways than others_, he thinks, and remembers a scared little boy with a coat that nearly swamped him hanging off his shoulders. Smiling, he taps a page further on in the paper. "See this? Someone they're calling the Batgirl. They're following his example."

"Does the table need setting?" Babs asks, and moves with almost superhuman haste to collect knives and forks.

He moves to the table, pouring water for the three of them. When Blake meets his eyes he nods, just slightly. "You sure you don't mind spending Christmas dinner with your old boss? You must have better offers open."

"It's fine." He shrugs and grins, a little sadly. "I don't have anyone else to spend it with."

With a second nod that refuses to ask any questions, he settles down at the table, allowing the bustle to carry on around him. When John passes the roast potatoes to his daughter a small smile passes between them. He lowers his head and nestles his own smile close and secret.

"Jimmy just texted me; he'll phone later," his daughter informs them happily. With a swift leap to the side she finally ducks behind Blake and pops a party hat festooned with streamers and sprigs of holly onto his head. The former detective attempts to glower at her, and fails quite miserably. "Come on, let's eat. I'm starved."

_You did this_, he thinks occasionally when he hears some snippet of news from John over the Wayne Foundation, or receives a text from his daughter in his lunch hour, or even just sees people walking the streets of Gotham, _you achieved this_. He's alive somewhere, he knows it with every fibre of his being, but that doesn't deny the sacrifice of the Batman. _You did this, you rescued us from Bane, and the Joker and the mob, and more than that, you rescued us from ourselves. Thank you._

His daughter is here, his son still loves him, he's surrounded by more good health and good company than he thought possible after all he's seen. Gotham's streets resound now not with gunshots and tanks but a few children wrestling in the snow. He's waited so long for today. So he draws a chair out for his daughter, passes John the wine, and raises his own glass in a silent toast.

Somehow, without hoping, he's gotten exactly what he's always wanted.

-o-


End file.
